Saturday, October 11, 2014
Sexist and Racist
Bernard Knox (1914-2010), The Oldest Dead White European Males and Other Reflections on the Classics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993), p. 12:
Newer› ‹Older
Advocates of multiculturalism and militant feminists, among others, have denounced the traditional canon of literature that has so long served as the educational base for Western societies, repudiating it not only as sexist and racist but even as the instrument of ideological Gleichschaltung used by a ruling class to impose conformity. At the heart of this so-called canon, its source and still after all these years its vital core, are the masterpieces of classical Greek literature: the epic poems of Homer; the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; the comedies of Aristophanes; the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides; the odes of Pindar and the remnants of the other lyric poets, Sappho their brightest star; and the dialogues of Plato.
